


Earnestly Yours

by starclipped



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, a few curse words, also mentions of steve/peggy, bucky comes home to steve, character study in a way, sort of a gen fic but steve knows he's in love with bucky, this whole story is about steve from before TFA to after TWS, vague mentions of suicidal tendencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2595752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starclipped/pseuds/starclipped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's had a lot of things taken from him in his life. The worst of all was Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earnestly Yours

Steve’s had a lot of things taken from him in his life.

**±**

His father was taken before he was born, lost to the First World War before he could know his only son. Steve had forced himself into that shadow since before he could understand why he had only one parent instead of two; standing tall like a soldier and picking fights just to prove he could fight them.

He looked like his mom in the details, like his dad in the structure. Mostly. He had Sarah’s eyes and pouted pink lips, her dark fanned lashes, and honey colored floppy hair. But he possessed his dad’s thick eyebrows and square jaw, far too square for his little body at the start, and a bumped nose that looked like it’d been broken before he’d even started getting punched, like an omen of the trouble that was to come.

He had his father’s deep voice, he’d been told, and his father’s stuck-out ears, but he didn’t have his father.

±

His health was taken from him the moment he came out of the womb, blue-faced and gasping for breath, choking on the cries he worked so hard to force out. Steve didn’t remember this, only knew because of how frightened his mother always became when she spoke of it, how her eyes glistened when she looked at him like he’d start fighting for his first breaths all over again.

She wasn’t wrong.

Steve’s lungs didn’t ever get enough air and sometimes he couldn’t walk up the four flights of stairs to get to their rickety little apartment. On bad days, he couldn’t even breathe in the city, had to stay in bed and suffer through the stuffy air because it didn’t make him flare up as badly as the wind creeping through the cracked window.

Steve’s left ear didn’t hear all sounds and his eyes didn’t see pictures clearly, didn’t see the colors properly either, and his back was crooked like a snake, but he never complained about the pain or frustration. Health had been taken from him before he could know what health was, so he never missed it, only dreamt of what it’d feel like to be whole.

 

The closest he’d ever come to feeling whole was when he met Bucky.

±

Steve was barely a man when his mother was taken from him, too.

She’d been sick for a long time, as sick as he got in the winters, only worse. He tricked himself into thinking she’d make it because she was stronger than him and he’d gotten through worse, always came out of his feverish haze with a lazy smile for his mother and his best pal, Bucky.

When Steve was ill and bed-ridden and Sarah had to work, it was Bucky who’d come over. He’d come with his mother at first, being too young to know how to care for another person, but he learned quick and got good at nursing Steve, no matter how much Steve hated it. But Bucky had a way of working that would trick his addled mind into thinking he’d get his way.

“ _Come lay on the couch so I can keep an eye on you,_ ” Bucky would say when Steve stubbornly sat in the hard-backed chair and forced himself to practice drawing instead of eating the watery soup or sleeping off his ailment. “ _The chair’s gonna hurt your back. And anyway, the doctor said you need someone to watch you all hours of the day and I’m tired, so get over here and lemme check your temperature._ ”

Steve would huff in irritation and, thinking it would spite his best friend, got up and stumbled to the bedroom they shared, slamming the door behind him. It was only as he was drifting off to sleep that he realized, yet again, how Bucky could play Steve like a fiddle.

But it was Bucky knowing how to care for someone as mulish as Steve that taught him how to care for his equally mulish mother.

He sat by her, held her hand when she slept and tipped water into her mouth when she woke. For weeks, Steve did nothing but sit by Sarah and pray, but she was still taken in the end.

±

Steve didn’t have much to lose after his mom’s death. There were jobs he couldn’t work and dames that wouldn’t give him the time of day and clothes that got ruined beyond repair in back alley scuffles, sure, but nothing that couldn’t be replaced later on.

Steve didn’t have much to lose, except Bucky.

The Second World War came as quick and easy as rain and Bucky was drafted eventually. Of course he would be, as strong and able-bodied as he was. Smart, too. He left Steve alone in their apartment, left for basic as Bucky and came back as Sergeant Barnes, ready to ship out for England first thing the next morning. Steve never stopped trying to enlist, but no one would give him the 1-A, though they did eventually stop laughing in his face. Desperate times called for desperate measures, but Steve wasn’t even good enough for desperation.

 

Steve knew that different people could look at Bucky and see different things. He was sweet to the old women in their tenement, charming to the girls at the dance hall, a trouble maker to the men who owned the shops around the alleys Bucky jumped into, and a funny, hard worker to the boys at the docks. He was smart to their teachers and a sinner to the nuns and one of the best men Steve had ever and would ever know.

When Steve looked at Bucky, he saw all the things that everyone else saw; only he saw _more_. He saw Bucky rolling his eyes with a sigh, with bloody fists and a jutted chin; with a crinkled nose and furrowed brows and tapping toes and swinging legs; with red-rimmed eyes and fingers that compulsively ran through hair. He saw Bucky with red lips smirking and eyes shining like the moon over water, with smiles so bright that his skin crinkled and his teeth, the crooked as perfect as the straight, shown wide in his big mouth.

He saw Bucky with eyes so wide and tender, so open that Steve could swear he glimpsed a soul, and seeing Bucky was the most beautiful thing he could imagine.

For a while, he didn’t have to imagine it.

±

Dr. Erskine was taken after changing Steve’s life.

He’d met him at the Expo after giving his best friend a hug and one final look. Steve had tried enlisting again and was preparing to flee when the Doctor came in, cool and kind and curious. He asked Steve if he wanted to kill Nazis and he hadn’t, not then.

_I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from._

It was his whole life summed up in one sentence and finally, someone besides Bucky gave him a chance.

He endured basic with the same gritted determination as anything else, ignoring the jabs and the jeers and the obvious attempts at knocking him down. He stood with the rest of the soldiers and tried to tell himself that he belonged and only started believing it when he saw Agent Peggy Carter punch a disrespectful man in the face.

Peggy was a lot like Bucky, Steve figured. They were both strong-willed and caring, both highly intelligent and protective. They had tempers, though not as bad as Steve’s, and they _cared_ ; about people, about the world – about little sickly Steve Rogers. Peggy looked at him like he was something to be treasured and he looked at her the same. She just wasn’t the first one to make him feel that way.

**×××**

_You wouldn’t do well over here, Steve. We’ve got commanding officers who tell you what to do and how to do it, when to get it done. They tell you what to do and you actually have to listen. No talking back, no picking fights. It’d be a nightmare for you. Hell, I think they’d get so tired of yelling and making you drop and give them something that they’d just send you right on home._

_I think a couple of the guys would like you, though. One named Jones is sort of the artsy type, knows French. And Dugan calls himself Dum Dum, so he knows how to make a guy laugh, even a dry punk like you._

_I miss you, but I’m glad you’re not here. Tell me what you’ve been up to and don’t bother lying, Becca will say so if you’re causing trouble._

**×××**

Steve got letters from Bucky, letters that were supposed to be going to Brooklyn but were intercepted and sent to the SSR at Camp Lehigh. They were never filled with much, but it was like a timeline to Steve, showing him when his friend got to the front lines and the toll it took.

It started as sort of a joke, Steve signing his own letters with a palpably dry _Earnestly Yours_ to prelude his name. It started off as a joke, but it never really felt like one, not when Bucky’s shaky writing suddenly evened on those last three words.

**×××**

_Mom says she hasn’t seen you and Becca says you left Brooklyn. What the hell are you doing, Steve? I lost 5 guys today. Don’t make me ~~lose~~ worry about you, too. Please._

_I don’t know what you think it’s like over here, but it’s_

_You know what I was thinking about the other night? When we went and saw Snow White and the look on your face the whole time… You were so amazed, but I told you not to be, didn’t I? ‘Cause you could draw like that, easy. You can go work for Disney, get rich doing what you love, but you gotta stay out of the war. Promise me you won’t let someone take you._

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

_~~There’s so much~~ _

_~~This guy’s head~~ _

_I don’t know how Dum Dum does it, but he’s always got a cigarette. Shit, he’s always offering, too, but once you start it’s hard to stop and I don’t wanna bring that habit back home to your asthma._

_~~You’re not home, are you? Tell me what you did. Where are you? Please be safe.~~ _

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

He’d drawn Bucky a picture of the neighbor’s cat by his newly enhanced memory, just to keep up the pretense of being in Brooklyn instead of on tours with tights and dancing women. Erskine had been taken and with him went the opportunity to fight. Instead, Steve was stuck selling bonds to cheering audiences and making children laugh with his exaggerated punches to a guy dressed as Adolf Hitler. He could be out there gunning for the _real_ Hitler, the one sending Nazis to torture and kill innocent human beings, the one that Bucky was risking his life trying to stop.

 _You are not enough_ , Phillips had told him. He could hear more and see better than anyone, colors and all; he could run faster and farther, could punch harder and swim longer and go hours without sleep. He was in a perfect body as a perfect soldier, just like he always wanted to be, and he still wasn’t good enough. Not yet.

±

Bucky is taken _again_. Not by the draft, not by the army, but by the enemy.

 _You were meant for more than this,_ Peggy tells Steve one rainy day. And then she tells him that the 107 th had been captured and only a few returned and Steve makes it his mission, orders be _damned_ , to show that he _is_ good enough, to show that he was meant to save his best friend like Bucky always saved him.

He leaves with Peggy and Howard Stark because MIA is not KIA, and even if it was, Steve would have to know for sure, would have to see a body or hear from someone that Bucky Barnes had been shot dead in front of their eyes.

Bucky had promised him, after Steve’s mother died and he tried to lock himself away from the only other person who was always there; Bucky had promised him _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal_ , and the least Steve can do is make sure that line hasn’t ended yet.

He drops behind enemy lines and sneaks into their territory, adrenaline pumping and fear as high as ever. He _is_ afraid, but it doesn’t stop him, only drives him harder, burns him hotter, and makes him think before he acts for once. And that leads him to cages full of prisoners, men from the 107 th and beyond. They look at him like they don’t know what to think, which is so much different and yet so much the same as always, and he leaves them to escape in a horde while he searches every room in that dark hallway for Bucky.

There’s a short, stout man with glasses that spots him, freezes, and then runs away. It’s instinct to head into the room he fled from and his chest seizes when he hears the noises coming from deeper inside.

“Sergeant, 32557…”

“Bucky. Oh my god.”

Seeing Bucky strapped down to a table, staring at the ceiling like he’s out of his mind, cuts Steve deep. It’s intense and it makes his insides feel hot, but Steve got Bucky back and that’s what matters.

Then Bucky looks at Steve, half his face shadowed in sickly green from the lights still glowing in the darkness, and there’s a flicker of clarity in his wide eyes.

“Is – is it –” his best friend stutters.

Steve exhales his fear and inhales relief. “It’s me,” he says breathlessly, hands clutching Bucky’s shoulders. “It’s Steve.”

It’s the sweetest feeling he’s ever experienced, the way Bucky smiles at him, slow and groggy but sincere enough for his eyes to crinkle and for his lips to pull up enough to let his teeth peek through.

“Steve,” he murmurs.

It’s the first time with these ears that he’s hearing his name from those lips. It’s music.

“C’mon.”

“ _Steve_.”

He touches Bucky’s head, tries to see if there’s anything physically amiss, but his gaze keeps getting drawn back to the lividus eyes staring disbelievingly at him. God, to see him like this is an almost euphoric moment. He feels so much and he’s not used to it, having everything bubble up inside him, but it doesn’t matter because Bucky is alive and Steve will get him out and he won’t let anything take Bucky from him again. He _won’t_.

 

Bucky won’t let anything take Steve from him, either. Not even fire. Because when Steve commands him to go, Bucky screams _NOT WITHOUT YOU_ and that’s that. They go down together or not at all. Steve chooses not at all.

±

There’s a group of men that Bucky knows. They’re names are Dugan, Jones, Morita, Falsworth, and Dernier. They walked behind Steve and Bucky on the way to base and even before that, they were in the first cage he unlocked. Bucky says, without a doubt, that they’re all dumb enough to follow Steve. He’s right.

“What’d I tell you? They’re all idiots.”

Steve sits down and watches Bucky take a swig of his alcohol. He’s been in this spot all night, drinking one glass after the other and not saying a word to anyone. Steve isn’t stupid and he’s not naïve; he knows Bucky’s putting on a brave face after being tortured in Zola’s lab and then walking himself all the way back without a single complaint. “ _Let’s hear it for Captain America!_ ” he’d cheered, but everything after that was half-hearted and low.

“How ‘bout you?” Steve asks. He shouldn’t, not after everything Bucky’s been through, but he has to, even if it’s self-deprecating and off-handed. “You ready to follow _Captain America_ into the jaws of death?”

“Hell no,” Bucky replies, just like he should. Only… “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight –” he sighs, turning to Steve with heavy eyes and a quirked mouth. “I’m following him.”

He has to turn away because there’s nothing to say to that. Even if he thought about it, no words could convey his gratitude, his relief. Bucky would never leave him behind; not in sickbeds or playgrounds, not in back alleys, in battlefields.

And when Bucky asks if he’s keeping the suit and Steve tells him – maybe a little suggestively – that it’s growing on him, he’s at war inside his head and heart. There’s Bucky and there’s Peggy and there’s the battle. He loves two of those things, but in different ways. He doesn’t know –

He doesn’t know.

±

Bucky never strays from Steve, but he’s distant all the same. His smiles never reach his eyes and his laughs are hollow, but he’s still warm and his heart still beats and Steve still needs him, _wants him_ , reverently.

±

**×××**

_Heard Phillips grumbling about how you’re not always right. What rule did you break this time?_

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

They write letters between Hydra base raids.

Bucky is one of the best shots they have and Steve is lucky to have his six watched by such a good sniper. But Bucky also has hard eyes after every mission and he won’t talk to Steve about anything worth a damn.

So, they write letters, still.

**×××**

_I like the new uniform. Shield’s nice, too. Suits you better than a gun._

_You’ve come a long way from trash can lids, Stevie._

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

_~~You know I’m proud of you. You know I~~ _

_~~I forget it’s you sometimes, you look so different. Think you’re back in Brooklyn. Think I’m back on~~ _

_~~I miss~~ _

_Hey, guess what Agent Carter told me today. You thought there was a live grenade in training and you jumped on it. Are you fucking kidding me, Steve? I nearly had a stroke. And I don’t care if you’re big and strong ~~and~~_ ~~Captain America~~ _, stop jumping off those fucking tanks._

 _~~Exasperatedly~~ _ _Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

They sleep together at night, like they used to back at home in the winters. It’s snowing and it’s cold – not for Steve and not even so much for Bucky, if the lack of blankets says anything – and it’s just a habit to share body heat. Steve sleeps better next to Bucky and he might be fooling himself, but Bucky always looks a little more rested the mornings after holding Steve. It’s comfort. It’s –

There are things Steve wants that he knows he’s shouldn’t, that he’s always known he shouldn’t. There are things he thinks that Bucky might want, too. And they stare at each other, alone with all of those _things_ thrumming through the air between them, and it would be nothing for Steve to lean forward and kiss him. It would be nothing and it would be everything and it would be…

He doesn’t. They don’t.

They can’t.

**×××**

_If we catch Zola tomorrow, we’re one step closer to winning the war. Least, that’s what everyone’s saying. So I propose we go to the Grand Canyon when we get home. What do you say, punk?_

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

±

It’s been so long since something was taken from Steve, he forgets it can happen.

±

It happens.

±

Bucky was taken from Steve once more. This time, he won’t come back.

Steve watches his best friend pick up the shield, trying to protect Steve like he always does, getting blasted through the metal for his troubles.

Steve watches Bucky hang on to a wobbly railing, reaching for Steve, and Steve has never felt so much fear. He climbs onto the side of the train and reaches out.

“Bucky!” he shouts. “Hang on! Grab my hand!”

Steve watches Bucky grasp cold air, hears the railing creak and snap.

“No!” he yells. But it happens.

Steve watches Bucky fall, drop through the air like something expendable instead of infinitely precious. Bucky screams and it echoes through the snowy mountains. And he gets smaller and smaller and Steve’s whole world narrows down, blanketed by something far colder than the snow.

He’s been stricken so many times in his life, but he’s never been ripped apart, not until now.

Like everything good, like his father and his mother and Erskine, Bucky is taken, and Steve can do nothing but press his crumpled face into the cold metal and wish his hands would let go.

 _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal._ It’s a cruel irony that their end of the line is a train.

±

The bar is empty, overturned and blackened from the bombings, but at least it’s still there. Steve sits for a long time, his body wakening from its numb state, and he cries. His lungs feel frail, can’t get enough air with his wrenching sobs. His heart gallops wild and off track. He’s consumed with crippling grief and the hole in his chest can’t even be masked by the effects of alcohol. This is the only pain he’s ever wanted to run from, but now he can’t. Not yet.

 

Peggy finds him and tells him it’s not his fault. _You did everything you could._ Steve wants to laugh. He’d cry again if more tears would come, but now he’s back to being numb.

“Did you believe in your friend? Did you respect him? Then stop blaming yourself. Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must’ve thought you were worth it.”

Steve wasn’t worth it. He never was. And now Bucky’s gone because he couldn’t see that.

Steve’s heart is still beating, so he can still fight, but he’s not alive anymore. Even with Peggy and even with time, he might not ever be.

±

He reads Bucky’s final note. Neither of them will ever see the Grand Canyon.

±

There’s a blue cube that falls through the plane floor after making Schmidt disappear. The Valkyrie is headed to New York, ready to destroy thousands of lives, and Steve can’t let that happen, so he does what he can. He sits in the chair and hears a whisper of Bucky tell him to stop, but there isn’t any other choice.

He pilots the plane towards the ocean and listens to Peggy’s voice on the radio, the picture of her in his compass staring up at him from the dash. It’s not right for him to do this to her, but –

They make plans they both know Steve won’t be able to follow through with, but at least it’ll be Steve that goes this time, not Peggy. She’ll be alive and safe, two things he couldn’t promise for Bucky.

 

The plane hits the water and Steve hits the floor, compass clutched in hand. He doesn’t try to move, doesn’t stop breathing until his body shuts down when the ice consumes him, freezing him on the outside as fully as grief had on his insides.

With everything that’s been taken from Steve, he gives his own life now.

±

±

Steve wakes up. It’s 70 years into the future and he wakes up looking just like he did before he crashed the plane.

Steve wakes up, but his life is still taken.

 

He has trouble adjusting at first. Things are so different than they were when he was growing up. Technology has advanced amazingly and people have further evolved. Places are brighter and more vivid; a pleasure to his old-new eyes, but something is missing.

Steve woke up, but not all of him came home.

He doesn’t have a home.

±

Most of the Commandos are dead. Peggy’s in a home with a failing memory. All of Bucky’s letters, except for the last one, are gone.

Bucky’s gone, too.

Steve is alone in the New World; a man out of time, out of touch, and out of spirit.

±

Steve’s at odds with Nick Fury. He thinks the man is trying to do right by the world, but his methods aren’t something Steve can agree with. Still, he lets himself go with Phil Coulson, who is encouraging if a bit awkward, and meets with SHIELD. He’s only been out of the ice for a few months, but he’s learned enough to know that SHIELD stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division and that Peggy, Howard, and Colonel Phillips all had a hand in its making.

Steve meets a wry woman named Natasha Romanoff and a quiet scientist named Bruce Banner. The former is a spy and an assassin, the latter a rampaging monster on occasion. He’s on a helicarrier because agents have been compromised and taken by an apparent god with a magical scepter. He’s got a mission, at least. He can be useful. _He can._

 

Steve meets Tony Stark in Germany. They don’t get along as well as he and Howard did. All links to his past are severed.

 

Nick Fury wanted a team called The Avengers to fight the battles they never could. Steve is honored to be considered for this team, but no one is on the same page. They squabble like children and Steve is only making things worse. He knows it isn’t fair to look to Tony and expect to see Howard, expect to see Dugan or Jones or Morita or _Bucky_. But he can’t help it and he’s angry, _so angry_ , and it’s thrumming through his veins, spewing from his mouth without control.

“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”

He crowds Tony like all the bullies used to do to him.

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

Stark’s arrogance amuses him. It fuels his anger, too.

“I know guys –” _known_ “– with none of that worth ten of you.” It’s all he can see when he closes his eyes, flashes of his friends, their bravery and loyalty and steadfastness. None of that comes from Stark. “And I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

“I think I would just cut the wire.”

Steve smirks. He can believe what he’s just heard.

“Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

That… that isn’t something he wants to say, not entirely. He just… well –

“A hero? You mean like you? You’re a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

Steve wants Tony to put on his fancy suit because he’s itching for a fight. It’s not new, but he wants to _throttle_ Stark and it scares him because without Bucky or Peggy around to reel him in, he's not sure what he can do now that he's capable. He tries to remember what Erskine had said, why he chose him to take this gift and burden.

_The serum amplifies everything that’s inside. So, good becomes great, bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man who has known power all his life will lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength and knows compassion. Whatever happens tomorrow, promise me one thing: that you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man._

It’s the only promise he has left to keep, so he has to keep it.

And he does, he thinks. He and Tony patch things up mostly and end up working pretty well together. He stays on the ground with Natasha and Barton, fights with a mythical man called Thor, and some of his lost faith gets restored when Banner takes control of his monster and fights alongside them. Steve is proven wrong when Stark steps up and guides a missile into space and this odd group of people, these Avengers, remind him that he isn’t the only one to have people taken away.

It doesn’t make it easier.

±

He’s been with SHIELD for two years. Every day simply fades into the next.

He likes Natasha. She’s smart and funny and doesn’t treat him like he’s on a pedestal, but he can’t trust her. She and Fury have too many secrets and are unwilling to let their teams in on them. Steve tries to tell him that this isn’t how things should work, that soldiers trusting each other is what makes an army. SHIELD doesn’t need an army, though. They need spies, people to keep their secrets and steal everyone else's.

He only stays because Peggy helped make this agency in an attempt to do some good and he has nowhere else to go if he leaves. It doesn’t always seem worth it.

±

Freedom is being taken – not just from Steve, but from the world. Fury is ready to allow preemptive strikes on people before they’re even proven guilty. He and SHIELD are setting up measures to punish before a crime can be committed because they’re afraid of the future and its mysteries. It’s not right and it gets Fury shot by an assassin with a metal arm. If anything good comes from this darkness, it’s the revelation that Natasha is on his side.

And if anything good comes from the 21st century, it’s definitely Sam Wilson. Steve feels like, for the first time in a long time, he’s made a real friend. Sam is funny, understanding, and loyal, and he cares about the man behind the shield. He cares about Hydra being masked as SHIELD. It’s a relief to be able to trust again.

±

_Earnestly Yours_

But he’s not. Bucky is alive and he isn’t Steve’s – he doesn’t even _remember_ Steve, let alone his own name.

“ _Who the hell is Bucky?_ ”

Steve’s whole world shatters like it did the day Bucky fell. Somehow, this time is worse.

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,” he tells Natasha. It might just be the truest thing he’s ever said. It most definitely is the saddest.

He remembers the day they buried his mother as clear as the TV’s Stark owns. He’d been numb, withdrawn, and Bucky had been there through it all. He spoke of staying with his family, of taking out trash and shining shoes in exchange for sleeping on couch cushions like when they were kids because Steve could never accept pity or charity. It was then that he’d promised Steve, with full tender sincerity, forever.

_I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal._

Bucky, who is _not_ Bucky but _is_ , tries to kill him. Something has happened to make him this way; he’s been torn apart and played with, controlled and remade and removed from himself. Steve can’t handle it for much longer. Sam says Steve doesn’t know him, that he isn’t the same guy; that he’s not the kind you save, but the kind you stop.

This is a second chance and if Steve can’t fix his mistake of letting Bucky fall, then this mission will be his last.

±

Bucky stabs Steve and shoots him, screams that he isn’t James Buchanan Barnes and that they haven’t known each other all their lives. Steve stops the last helicarrier from launching and lets himself be pummeled by the man he’s loved his whole life.

“You’re my mission!” Bucky shouts hoarsely, his voice as desperate as his unforgiving metal fist.

Steve has no tears to shed, just resignation to present.

“Then finish it,” he forces out, lax and defeated underneath the broken, coiled body above his. “‘Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

Bucky’s fist stays in the air and his eyes stay on Steve’s bruised and swollen face. He swears he sees a flicker of something in those familiar eyes, but everything rushes by before he can try to memorize the moment.

He’s falling. He’s falling from the carrier like Bucky fell from the train. He’ll hit the water and drown like he was supposed to the first time, but he knows he deserves a fate worse than this, though part of him feels that nothing could be as bad as Bucky’s haunted expression.

 

Steve is dragged to shore, left to heal until someone finds him. He knows without a doubt that Bucky pulled him out of the Potomac. He knows that when he fell, Bucky followed. When Bucky fell, Steve stayed frozen in his spot and watched.

±

Sam goes with Steve to find Bucky while Natasha clears things up before trying to disappear. They’ve all had to make sacrifices, but Steve’s not giving this up. He’ll find Bucky and he’ll take him back.

±

**×××**

_Stop following me._

**×××**

There are no letters and no signatures, but there are notes. At every Hydra base they chase him to, they find the same words written, in blood on the floors or scratched into crumpled pieces of paper clutched with dead fingers or pinned to the wall with a blade.

 _Stop following me_.

Steve keeps going.

±

He’s forced to stop the search for his friend when the world is threatened by a delusional robot created as a peacekeeping program by Tony Stark’s hands. Steve is always fighting, but this one goes on for what feels like years. It’s brutal and frightening and shocking because he learns something about himself; he's worthy to lift Thor's hammer. It feels like some sort of sick joke, especially when his shield - his safety net, his only link to himself - breaks.

He continues his search for Bucky without it.

±

**×××**

_I’m not who you think I am. Stop wasting your time._

**×××**

Months pass and nothing important happens, but the details change.

Steve meets T’Challa and gets a new shield. He does his best to escape his head and his mission by spending time with Sam and Natasha doing normal things, whatever that means these days.

He stops speaking to Tony Stark because Tony Stark wants to hand Bucky Barnes over to the Government. It’s not happening, it’s not, and Steve promises Bucky through his own scribbled notes, still signed _Earnestly Yours_ , that he’ll never let anything happen to him again.

Bucky doesn’t believe him, so Steve will just have to prove it.

±

He doesn’t know what happens, it’s all a blur, but he knows for certain he sees Bucky’s gaunt face staring down at him when he finally opens his eyes.

“Bucky, please – please come home,” he croaks out. Then he blinks and Bucky disappears, just like the ghost he’s been told to be, only this time he leaves something in his dust.

**×××**

_Keep yourself safe. I don’t know if all of what I remember is true, but I know I remember you. Please stop following me. ~~If I have a home, I know it’s with you.~~_

_I’ll come back when I’ve finished whatever it is I started. I’ll come back when I understand my own mind._

**×××**

Steve gets a new apartment in Brooklyn and waits because there’s no more fight. He waits because that’s what Bucky needs.

It's tough, but he does it with as much determination as anything else he's done.

±

Steve works on his patience with Sam now that they’ve both relocated to New York. Sam helps him with his nightmares and his guilt, helps him come to terms with all the things that have been taken from him so he can push through them once and for all. Natasha’s good for that, too. Plus, if he ever needs the extra support of a fellow warrior, Thor is only a lightning strike away.

He ends up speaking to Tony again as well.

±

Steve’s had a lot of things taken from him in his life, but it hasn’t all been for naught.

±

Steve’s sweaty and slightly tired from overexerting himself on his run, though he’s in relatively good spirits by the time he reaches his apartment door. Opening it, he steps inside and freezes on the spot because there, sitting stiffly on his couch, is a ghost.

But he’s not a ghost anymore.

Steve stares at Bucky Barnes with wonder and excitement and a smidge of anxiety, and Bucky stares back with mirrored emotions swimming through his eyes. His hair’s a little shorter, his jaw is only sprinkled with stubble, and he looks less wild than he had in Steve’s not-delusion at the hospital. But he does look lost and Steve won’t allow that anymore.

“Buck,” he whispers. His smile is respite and no matter what’s to come, Steve can feel his heart finally start to settle. Even with the serum, Steve never could be whole without Bucky by his side.

“ _Steve_.”

There’s a tentative smile on Bucky’s closed lips. Steve thinks that after all this time, he’s still so beautiful. He could tell him that these days. He could tell him, he  _will_ tell him, but in due time. They'll have loads of it now, the Avengers will make sure.

He strides carefully forward and pulls Bucky into a tight, warm embrace. There are tears in his eyes and a face-breaking grin on his face when Bucky wraps one metal and one flesh arm just as tightly around Steve's body to pull him impossibly closer. He smells mostly the same and he looks mostly the same, feels mostly the same too, but he's changed and so has Steve and it's alright. It's great.

“You’re here. _God, Buck_. You’re really here.”

“Missed you, punk.”

Steve buries his face into Bucky’s neck and laughs. It’s easy to forget all the things he’s lost when he has the most important one in his arms, found and returned after so long apart. He’ll never let go of Bucky, not ever again; the way Bucky’s pressing his mouth against Steve’s temple tells a story that’s still the same. _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line_. Their end of the line has yet to come.

±

There’s a note stuck to the bedroom door. It simply reads:

_I’m home_

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Bucky_

**×××**

_Let's go to the Grand Canyon, Buck._

_Earnestly Yours,_

_Steve_

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, Keaton Henson continues to ruin my life. The idea for this fic came sort of in the afternoon while I started listening to Earnestly Yours by Keaton Henson (after spending days listening to You, which is such a Steve/Bucky song ugh). I didn't know what i was doing, so I just florwed with it and spent hours writing this when I should've been working on the last couple of chapters for IABKOP or the newest movie AU or the other AU that i've been sitting on for months. Uggghhhh. This is pretty much utter crap and all over the place and I'm sorry. I think I started off strong n the beginning but then it just fell apart towards the end, like always. And I know this is sort of different and more gen, but I hope you can still get enjoyment out of this, even just a little. I'd love to know what you think!
> 
> P.S. GO LISTEN TO EARNESTLY YOURS BY KEATON HENSON AND REN FORD. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PIECES OF MUSIC I HAVE EVER HEARD AND IT MADE ME CRY AND THINK OF STUCKY.


End file.
